Meta to fold off-Meta activity controls into one setting and expand personalization beyond ads

Meta is changing how people can manage the use of activity data that other businesses already share with the company, and it is expanding that data’s use beyond advertising. In a post published Tuesday on Meta Newsroom, the company said it already uses information such as games people play or purchases made on other websites to make ads more relevant, and it plans to broaden personalization to parts of the user experience including what appears in the Feed and how Meta’s AI answers questions.

The update targets the controls available to users. Meta currently offers two settings that govern how it uses activity shared by other businesses: “Your activity off Meta technologies” and “Activity from other businesses.” Meta said it will streamline those options by ending availability of the “Your activity off Meta technologies” setting, which it described as a way to disconnect that shared activity from a user’s account.

In place of the discontinued toggle, Meta said it is expanding the “Activity from other businesses” setting. According to Meta, this control (formerly called “Activity information from ad partners”) will let people decide whether Meta uses off-platform activity to personalize content. If someone allows Meta to use the data for personalization, the company said it will use the information to tailor both ads and non-ad content. If someone does not, Meta said it will not use that information to show more relevant ads or other content.

Meta emphasized that the changes do not involve collecting new data. The company said it is instead adjusting how it applies information that businesses already send to Meta. As an example, it pointed to a consumer who recently purchased a tent online, saying they might later see Reels related to camping. Meta also noted that its personalizing efforts extend across services used by roughly 3.5 billion people daily, describing personalization as a way to deliver content people come to its apps to find more quickly and easily.

The technical and product implication of the move is that a user’s off-platform activity may start influencing more than ad targeting. Meta specifically said that in the future, it will use the same category of shared activity to personalize content people see in their Feed and in AI responses. That matters because it links two parts of Meta’s strategy, the company’s advertising engine and its recommendation and AI systems, under a single consent framework.

Meta’s announcement frames the control simplification as a way to reduce overlapping settings. Instead of two toggles with similar subject matter, Meta wants users to manage the off-Meta activity question through one setting. In effect, the company says it will treat “Activity from other businesses” as the central permission for whether Meta can apply that data to personalized content beyond ads, including content surfaced in the Feed and answers generated by AI.

The rollout is scheduled to begin next month in the United States and a number of other countries, with additional countries to follow. Meta did not provide a single global go-live date in its post, but it directed readers to its Help Center for the latest availability details.

Outside observers framed the change as a potential expansion of off-platform personalization, with reporting that Meta plans to apply such data to feed recommendations and AI responses and that it may exclude certain regions at launch. The Verge also reported that a Meta spokesperson said the update would be based on existing data already used for advertising, and it described the new approach as consolidating the options users need to prevent Meta from using shared off-platform information to personalize feeds and AI outputs.

What remains unclear is the exact breadth of non-ad surfaces that will be personalized once the setting is allowed. Meta named the Feed and AI responses, but it did not enumerate which specific formats or experiences inside Facebook, Instagram, or other Meta products will change first, or how frequently the personalization will appear. The company also did not disclose whether personalization will be limited by additional factors such as user engagement, prior searches, or advertiser targeting constraints. For users, the practical question will be how Meta defines “other content” and how noticeable the personalization shift is compared with the ads already served based on off-platform activity.